Abstract: Social stigma critically hinders the recovery process of people with mental illness, diminishing their quality of life and community participation. In the last decades several approaches to reduce stigma have been explored, including protest, education and contact, with the last two being the gold standard to reduce social stigma. Music has a close relationship with mental health as several studies have proven its’ emotional, behavioral and biological benefits for people with mental illness. Music has also been explored as an innovative and impacting tool to fight social stigma, concurrently allowing to reduce experienced self-stigma as people with mental illness play an active role on the creative process and at the artistic events within their community. The goal of this work is to critically describe the intervention procedures of the Contratempo project, framing it within the current state of the art regarding anti-stigma research. This is a social innovation project which brings together university students and people with mental illness in the same creative environment. Together, the group develops musical products and events in order to fight social stigma and promote social inclusion for people with mental illness.Keywords: social stigma, self-stigma, mental illness, music, community inclusion